


A Note of Hope

by tuesdayafternoon



Category: Merlin - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Arthur remembers, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Merlin waits, Reincarnation, musicianAU, stay with me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesdayafternoon/pseuds/tuesdayafternoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur knows there's something missing - that there's always been something missing, from the moment he was born. He's celebrating another lonely birthday when he hears a song by an artist named Emrys and suddenly, for the first time in as long as he can remember, he feels like things are falling into place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Note of Hope

**Author's Note:**

> After years of meaning to, I finally watched 'August Rush'. Aside from having a brilliant score (and although it was fantastically idealistic), it honed the theme of music bringing people together. This fic's nothing like the movie but having joined the Merlin fandom long enough to see it ending, and being a big fan of musician AUs, I really loved that concept as applied to Merlin and Arthur. A year and a _lot_ of rewriting later, I finally have a story!
> 
> Each section was written with an album or a song in mind, so I encourage you to check out the album art in the links in the section headings and the playlist that can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?feature=edit_ok&list=PL1KyqId6xuwi9soDe3Fc3-h_cUrEmJdEI). Thanks for reading!

  **~**

**[A Band in Hope - The Matches](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BRZSdcQPL._SL500_AA300_.jpg) **

||When you belong to a song, you belong.||

~

It’s your birthday when you first hear the song. You’re in the bottle shop, waiting in line with a box of cask wine in one hand and a shopping bag of instant noodles in the other. You worked harder than usual at your job today, and you’re tired. You're twenty minutes of trudging through snow away from home. You’re alone.

Happy birthday, Arthur.

As you stand in that queue, the song’s lyrics trace strange patterns over the nape of your neck and make you shiver, despite how they’re filtered through a tinny, portable radio. You rotate your head gently as the notes become a tingling warmth, as though you had not left your scarf on the hook by the door when you stepped into the snow-dusted night.

“Oi, Ken.” The voice in line behind you is sharp, impatient and rude. “Stop fantasizing about Barbie and pay for your fucking grog.”

You quickly straighten as you do what the man behind you says, not bothering to put a face to his voice. The rest of the song becomes lost on you as you drop the wine on the counter and pay for it. The lacklustre clerk (“Thank you have a good night see you next time,” he says monotonously) makes a fuss of pulling out a plastic bag you don’t need and ushers you to the side to serve the rude customer behind you. By this time, the final chords are fading and the radio announcer is speaking. You hope some of their useless prattle will include the name of the song. It doesn’t.

The song stays with you on the walk back to your flat, although you remember only a snatch of melody and none of the lyrics. You arrive home, locking the front door behind you and sliding the deadbolt across. You move through the darkness of the living room to the kitchen, and as its fluorescent light flickers to life you open your work laptop on the table. You would Google search the song, find it, download it and play it until the night fades or your consciousness does, but how do you search for a melody? How do you search for something you can’t articulate? A Youtube channel with music of roughly the same genre will have to do instead, so you turn up the volume, pour yourself a glass of wine and set the instant noodles to cook.

You sit alone in your kitchen, nursing glasses at various stages of emptiness and hoping you’ll be lucky enough to hear that song again. You listen through the acoustic, the clean and the distorted songs, spending the first second of each of them thinking that this one was the song you were looking for. You listen to the advertisements that come on every couple of songs, ones for power tools, apparently the perfect gift for dad at any time of year, and ones encouraging you to have a designated driver for the times you and all your friends go out and get plastered. You listen to the sex shop jingles, suggesting that you and your other half pursue creativity, think about the crack in the seal of your kitchen window that makes your white curtains murmur in the breeze and close the popups that so unhelpfully inform you that your soulmate is looking for you.

It’s entirely possible – in fact, infinitely probable – that this playlist doesn’t even contain the song and you won’t hear it again tonight. You hope you will. You pour yourself some more wine.

Your mobile phone rings and you answer it on the first trill without looking at the caller ID. You don’t speak down the line, but you never need to, not today. The person on the other end will know exactly what to say. Your father always does.

“I…” After one slurred syllable, you hear the sloshing of a mostly-empty bottle of spirits and several loud gulps. “I loved your mother,” your father says, stumbling over his words, “and you took her from me.” There’s sniffling and the bottle clinks against something. “I hope you’re happy.” Dial tone sounds. You drop the phone and let it skitter across the table.

The night wears on, and you just wait. Listen. The cask of wine is three quarters empty by the time it’s four minutes to midnight and four minutes until it’s no longer your birthday. Finally. It’s not exactly comfortable when you pillow your head on your arms but you’re warm enough, and tired, just tired. It makes it easier for the moments to trickle away, like grains slowly tipping the balance of a two-pan scale, until somehow they come to sound like quiet guitar melodies and whispered wishes, like bass notes that hum sadness as you’re granted your song at last.

You let the notes hold you, just for those four minutes. The song will end all too soon, and you don’t want it to, but it’s comforting to know it’s there, thumbing the skin in front of your ears and speaking to you quietly. Soon, the final chord rings into silence, and the room follows. No adverts, no new song. The playlist is finished.

There is something, though, a name: ‘Emrys – Stay With Me’, and next to that, ‘Buy Emrys’s new album _For Arthur_ on iTunes today!’

You stare at the screen blankly.

_For Arthur._

You must be drunker than you thought and you begin to laugh until your sides are hurting and you can barely draw breath. Soon there are tears in your eyes and suddenly you can’t figure out if you’re laughing or crying, because they sound the same unless you know how you feel and right now that sort of self-awareness is far, far beyond you. You close your laptop and put your head down on your arms again; here, you’ll lose your grip on tonight and slip into a new day.

 

**~**

**[All I Want - Kodaline](http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/300x300/81807083.jpg) **

||All I want is, and all I need is, to find somebody.||

~

It’s nights like this when you dream. Sometimes, you dream you’re a prince. Powerful, confident and sure of yourself, even when you’re horribly wrong. Sometimes, you dream you’re a knight. You’re strong and sharp, and you’re afforded respect even when you’re not-quite deserving of it. Then sometimes – these are your favourite – you’re just a man. A friend. You’re charming and loyal and, above all, courageous. You’d brave the stocks or jail to save your friends; you’d ride through bandit-riddled forests from the first glint of dawn to the last shred of daylight; you’d spin the most intricate of lies for Kings and nobles to pull your friends from the pyre or the executioner’s chopping block, and maybe even put yourself in their place.

Sometimes, you think you remember being brave.

You have to glance at the album in your hand to remind yourself why you’re here. The music shop is loud and busy and you’re tired from work, but you remain steadfast in the queue. In your suit and tie, you’re acutely aware of how out of place you are, especially with the group of teenagers still in their school uniforms ahead of you in line, grasping the same album you are.

Soon enough, the lady at the desk calls you forward.

“Sorry about the wait,” she says cheerfully, gesturing to the teenagers leaving. “They come in waves.”

You tell her not to worry about it, although she clearly isn’t worried about it, and you feel colour appearing in your cheeks. Thankfully, as you place the CD on the desk, she gives no indication of noticing.

“Ah!” she says instead as she sees what you’re buying. “Worth it, though. Fantastic album, this one.”

If every song sounds like the one you heard on the radio, then it will be. Usually, you’d be doubtful, expecting to buy twelve average songs and one good one which is why you usually stick to iTunes, but that doesn’t seem to bother you as much this time.

“He’s brilliant – appeared from nowhere!” The lady bounces on the balls of her feet in enthusiasm. “And he did an interview with AP and said he was already working on a new album, even before he’s toured with this one properly!”

You have no idea what the process of writing albums or touring is, nor the slightest clue as to what an AP is. That comment earns you a chuckle from the lady, and you feel your lips stretch into a smile to match.

“AP is an American music magazine,” she replies, gesturing to a shelf to the side of the counter. Sure enough, there’s the magazine. Unlike the other music magazines that surround it, however, there’s no photograph of the artist on the front, only a painted picture of a man facing away, hunched over a brown, leather bound book, quill to the page and writing lit only by a small flame in the palm of his other hand. You take a copy of the magazine and place it beside the album, whose cover is similar, just the flame burning in the palm of a man’s hand. You think they’re beautiful, you realise quite suddenly, in a lonely sort of way.

You must be studying it a little too intently. “Emrys does all his own artwork, too. Prefers it to photographs, even for magazine print.” She picks up the magazine and scans it through the computer before studying it as well. “I’d like to do that, draw for album covers. Well, not draw, paint. Well, not just draw or paint, I suppose, I mean _design_ album covers in general. I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this. Sorry.”

It’s perfectly alright.  And she should – give it a go, that is.

She smiles, busying herself bringing up the total. She takes the £50 note from you and returns your change, along with the magazine and album. “I’m Gwen, by the way.”

“I’m Arthur,” you reply.

“Really?”

Oh god. What if she thinks you’ve just said your name is Arthur because of what you’ve been talking about, like some sort of cheap attempt to get her into bed or something? What if she thinks you’re some pathetic fanatic who’ll turn stalker given time? What if she thinks you think the album was _meant for you_? Your face flushes properly pink this time.

Right. Well, you should go.

You turn away with the magazine and the album, but hesitantly. You haven’t hesitated while getting the hell out of an awkward moment in a long while. Maybe you could…push your luck?

Maybe she’d like to get a drink sometime? A coffee, maybe? You don’t know, it’s probably a bad idea. And you’ve said ‘maybe’ twice. Three times. Actually, never mind.

“Oh, um, sure.”

Sure. Right. That means something. That you should get her number. Right. You search your pockets for your phone, for a pen or some paper – inexplicably you’re empty handed. When you look up again, Gwen’s twirling a sharpie in one hand and holding out the other. She takes the CD from you and writes across the lighter colours.

“Enjoy the album,” she says as she hands the magazine back. “See you.”

Bye.

There’s a bounce in your step as you make your way home. You daren’t look at the parcels in your hands in case they’re a figment of your imagination, like a dream that’ll slip away from you as soon as you realise what’s happening. You’re taking the stairs to your apartment two at a time before you know it, and jimmying the CD case open. The first track begins to play as you stare in awe at the number written on the front between the magic burning in the palm of Emrys’s hand and _For Arthur_.  

 

**~**

**[We Don't Need to Whisper - Angels and Airwaves](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Angels_%26_Airwaves_-_We_Don't_Need_to_Whisper_cover.jpg) **

||I think I like today. I think it’s good. It’s something I can’t get my head around.||

~

You text Gwen, in the end. Your thumb hovers over the ‘dial’ button for ages, but you worry, first that she won’t answer and then that she will, next that she’d change her mind about giving you her number and after that that she never thought you’d call anyway.

_It’s Arthur. We met in the shop the other day?_

The first part comes easy; the rest, not so much. You wonder if you should wait for a reply, announce yourself, as it were, before leaping into conversation – but no, of course not. Surely, you have to give her a reason to talk to you. A question that needs answering, or avoiding, whatever the case may be. It takes an hour of poring over your mobile to ask her whether she would prefer coffee or a pub, and what time she finishes work so you can call her to straighten out the details. Even having exchanged a good seven text messages beforehand (not that you were counting), you barely make it out of that phone conversation alive, let alone with any of your dignity.

As far as first ~~dates~~ times hanging out with people you meet randomly at music shops go, yours goes pretty awfully, although Gwen refuses to admit it. The pub you decide on isn’t as quiet as you thought it would be after work on a Tuesday and the patronage is either less than welcoming of your company, or too enthusiastic. Your face reddens in shame as when you can’t find it in yourself to turn to the rude bloke wolf whistling and making untoward remarks at Gwen in order to tell him to his face that he’s being an asshole, and that he should show some respect. But what you don’t do, Gwen does herself. You’re shaking as the man then articulates another comment, this time aimed at you, and it’s difficult enough for you to bite out something along the lines of _we don’t want any trouble, just leave us alone_ and then you’re lost for words when he asks you how you’re going to _make him_ , _coward_.

You’re a little surprised when Gwen steps forward and articulates a few additional choice remarks of her own, and then even more so when she challenges the man to an arm wrestle. You’re less surprised when she wins, because by this stage you’re erring on the drunk side, laughing at the way the man’s nostrils flare in his anger and because by now the evidence has been overwhelmingly supportive of the fact that Gwen is awesome. The evidence also supports that the guy isn’t very happy about losing to a girl, and you dump some cash on the bar and run, Gwen close behind, because despite the burly security guard moving in to intervene you don’t want to hang around.

The night air is cool, but not freezing, sense-sharpening rather than numbing. You look over at Gwen and apologise, hands in your pockets, for how badly this turned out. For how, if she would like, you’d like to try it again and make it less of a disaster.

It doesn’t quite make sense when she looks at you and says, “It was a disaster, I’ll give you that. But that doesn’t mean it went badly.” You would tell her so, but then she leans up and kisses you on the cheek and you have a sudden revelation, quickly conceding that she may have a point and no, maybe not bad at all. She tells you that she had fun and that the two of you should do it again soon, before she bids you goodnight and begins to walk away.

That can definitely be arranged, you call after her. You’re good at disasters if nothing else.

“Okay!” she shouts, waving.

The dates (actual ones) that follow are better – _good_ , even. You do the usual things, the cinema, coffee. You peruse bookshops and vintage record shops together, play ridiculous games of Scrabble and solve each other’s 4 Pics 1 Word. You send her flowers, the purple and white ones that so beautifully compliment her skin tone, with the best album covers you know attached and sporting details of her loveliness, and Gwen sends you every interview, every album review of Emrys’s ever printed. You learn each other’s birthdays and favourite and least favourite colours; you learn that Gwen makes a mean lasagne and that you absolutely cannot roast chicken, although not for lack of trying. Three times. With help from Nigella Lawson.

You meet each other’s friends. (Or rather, you meet Gwen’s friends, Morgana and Mordred, and her brother Elyan. She introduces you over coffee at a café that plays indie rock and roll over the sound system where you have to raise your voice to be heard over the music. It’s only by chance that you bump into a work colleague of yours – Leon, no, Lance! That’s his name! – so you introduce him to Gwen. He and Gwen clasp hands for a moment, and you go to add more information about him – then you realise you don’t know any.  You ask if he’d like to join you and the others, and Gwen insists it’s no imposition when he protests, so he pulls up a chair.)

Sometimes, you and Gwen talk for hours on the phone; sometimes, you can just manage to type out a text message before you collapse in bed, exhausted. Sometimes, your dates end with the two of you making out on your or Gwen’s couch; sometimes, you leave with just a quick kiss.

They’re not quite disasters, like you promised you were so good at, but they’re fun. Fun enough to put you in such a good mood that you’re humming in the corridors at work, smiling for no reason in the lift, tapping your foot as you type away at reports in your office. Such a good mood that you don’t hear the purposeful stride of your father making his way up the corridor until he’s standing in your doorway.

 

**~**

**[Imago - The Butterfly Effect](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3f/The_Butterfly_Effect_-_Imago.jpg) **

~

|| **imago** _n._ an unconscious, idealised mental image of someone, especially a parent, which influences a person’s behaviour.||

“Is something the matter, Arthur?” You stop humming at once, your movements still and your smile fades to match. Your father wears his determined face, brow furrowed over intense eyes and mouth set in a straight line: he perceives a problem and is determined to get to the bottom of it.

“There’s nothing the matter, Father. Honestly, nothing.”

He closes the door behind him and sits on the edge of your desk, hands on hips. “You’ve been distracted.”

Have you?

Your father nods. “You have, and you know it.”

If “the matter” was a problem, then you would have told your father now. Something to argue, something to solve with logic and possibly a signed cheque, something that didn’t involve messy things like hearts on sleeves – you would debate that sort of thing and assume the solution your father proposed.

“If you’re sure.” Your father leaves and you breathe a sigh of relief, heart hammering in your chest. You jump out of your skin when an email alert on your computer chirps.

It’s from Gwen. There’s just a quick, “Hi, hope you’re having a good day” in the text body and it’s unsigned, but there’s an attachment: “Emrys talks about upcoming tour! Interview with Rock Sound Magazine.”

Out of your seat, hurtling into the hallway. That’s where you find yourself.

Wait.

“What is it, Arthur?”

“I met someone.” It comes out like a wrong note, buzzing and muffled.

Your father stands perfectly still, like a conductor before his orchestra. You wait for his signal.

“Huh,” he says finally, nonchalantly. Then, “Arthur, are you free for dinner this evening?”

You are, but you hesitate. You’re not eager to spend your evenings with this man; in fact, the very thought sends your stomach churning. Yet, you find yourself agreeing to a time and place – a restaurant that you’ve never heard of at an address that you have no idea how to find. One of your father’s favourites, apparently.

Right. You’ll see him then.

Dinner is uncomfortable. There’s classical music playing in the background, just busy enough to match the clinking of glasses and chatter of cutlery but simple enough to not demand attention. It feels as though there’s a gaping chasm between the two of you, vast metres of oak instead of the smart, white tablecloth over a square of stylish fibreglass separating you. You and your father eat mostly in silence; he sips his expensive wine and you drink your coffee in the hope its caffeine will excite your heart enough to push through the motivation to start conversation clotting in your arteries. In the end, you talk jerkily about work, about the weather, about the food and the restaurant’s ambience. But the topic never falls on Gwen.

Until finally you can’t take it anymore. “Shall we get to it, then?” you add to one of the many awkward silences.

“To what?”

The lecture, of course. What else? You met someone, you’re distracted – you know how it goes.

Your father frowns.

Well, you’ll have your father know that you’ve gotten more work than ever done in these past few weeks, and that when people knock on the door to your office it’s no longer as though they’re expecting Cerberus to answer. You’ll have him know that she’s strong and smart and she knows what she wants, and her friends are becoming your friends, and because of her even your own acquaintances are growing into your friends, and you haven’t really had any of _those_ since that kid Cedric when you were nine years old. But you don’t really expect this man to understand because he’s acutely logical (you tell him that) and cold (you only think that), but, “I think this is the closest I’ve ever been to being in love.”

..you weren’t going to tell him that, either.

Your father places his hands in his lap, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably, no doubt collecting a lengthy speech about how all that rubbish is fine until it inevitably starts to impact the job you do and how you conduct yourself in public and the quality of the work, just like what your mother did to him, and –

“Good.”

..good. Good? The word brings your thoughts to a halt with a _schink_ like steel colliding.

“Yes, Arthur, good.” Your father huffs a breath of laughter. “You look…more content. Happier.”

The waiter comes by and asks if he can get you anything else. Your father waves him away without sparing the man a look and you tell the waiter no thank you, and after that you’ve forgotten everything you were going to say; the uncomfortable fluttering in your stomach has been alleviated, too. You and your father finish your meals in silence, collect the bill and pay. You accompany your father to his car, since it’s close to where yours is parked anyway. His keys clink as he draws them from his pocket and uses them to unlock his luxury sedan.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” your father says. This is his goodbye.

Wait.

You clear your throat. “Today, you asked what the matter was. But you said I looked happier.” Your father watches you steadily, waiting for your question. “Most people wouldn’t call that a matter.”

“Well, I, uh…I didn’t mean it that way.”

This is your cue. You can walk away now and nothing will be better or worse tomorrow when you turn up for work. “Her name’s Gwen,” you offer.

The corners of your father’s mouth turn upwards and his eyes brighten slightly. “Ah,” he says. “I’ll have to meet her sometime.”

Your father? Meet Gwen? Not in a million years. “Yeah.” The corners on your own mouth twitch upward. “You will.”

Your father hesitates, jerkily placing a hand on your shoulder and giving it a brief squeeze. “Goodnight.” As he slides into his car, a slip of paper falls out and the wind ushers it down the footpath.

You watch it go and take a step after it.

“Uh, don’t worry about that,” your father says quickly. “It’s nothing.”

You nod and exchange farewells again. You watch your father pull away from the kerb before you move. The piece of paper is stuck up against a streetlight, its edges fluttering quietly in the breeze like turning pages of a book. It’s just a piece of paper, nothing special, so you shouldn’t need to concern yourself with it. You pick it up and examine it.

It’s a receipt, common enough. Blue ink, sketchy in places telltale of a cartridge soon needing replacement, headed by a simple logo, time and date, and closed off by a simple request for the customer to visit again. In the middle is a single item:

Qty: 1       Emrys 2013 _For Arthur_                    £15.99

This isn’t your father’s usual choice of music. Besides, he doesn’t frequent shops of any kind, usually. You don’t know what this is supposed to mean. You tuck the paper into your pocket.

Strangely, your first instinct is to speak to Gwen about this unexpected development. You wonder whether the subject of your father had stopped being a topic locked in the dankest of dungeons gradually, or whether there had been something in the coffee you had over dinner that suddenly flicked a switch. You’d think about the whole thing more but you don’t really want to, especially after spectacularly failing the one and only time you try talking to Gwen about it.

(The moment you opened your mouth, it felt like too much of an intrusion, given the carefree way Gwen was laughing with Lance during the lunch you were all eating together. If you had been paying attention to the conversation instead of thinking so hard about dinner last night, you probably would have also been laughing over whatever it is they were talking about. That quickly clinched your decision and you shook yourself out of your reverie, trying to piece together what you’d missed.

Apparently, it’d been some matching funny-now-but-not-so-much-then experiences they’d both had with infestations of huge rats in their first flats; you think you might have a story to add, but you can’t seem to remember it properly and the moment has passed anyway. You substitute your blank expression for a laugh and continue like nothing has changed.

Because nothing _has_ changed. Has it?)

 

**~**

**[Bon Iver - Bon Iver](http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/2011/06/20/bon_iver_bon_iver.jpg?1308586494) **

||bon hiver, _french,_ meaning ‘good winter’||

~

Dinner with your father becomes a regular thing. Several times a fortnight, your father pokes his head into your office and asks if you’d be up for dinner out. Mostly, when he asks, you are – time spent with Gwen or Lance and the others just happen to fall on other days. You’re sure you don’t enjoy these outings (how could you when you’re with this distant, begrudging man you call Father?) but you go because he asks, until one day you notice it’s been a fortnight and a half since your last dinner. Then you find yourself knocking on _his_ door.

He laughs when you ask, rubbing tired eyes, because he’s been busy. But it’s about time he had an early mark so dinner would be fine.

Oh, but wait. Not tonight. You and Gwen are doing something tonight. That’s okay, though, you can cancel.

“Uh, no,” your father says, “don’t cancel.” Then slowly, “maybe I could come with you?”

Meet Gwen?

“Yes.”

You’ll have to ask Gwen to make sure she’s okay with it, so in your lunch hour you visit her at work. When you get there, there’s a woman and two men sitting at a table surrounded by small piles of CDs, Sharpies in hand and talking to the people in a small huddle around them – clearly musicians. Gwen speaks to an older gentleman in a tan jacket and a fedora standing behind them, nodding and smiling and gesturing with her own copy of the band’s album. You wait, despite a pang of jealousy, and soon enough the fedora man concludes the conversation with several sharp words and a handshake. Gwen notices you then.

“Arthur!” she exclaims as you wander over.

She’s very cheery today, even for Gwen; you say as much. She then tells you that this is a local band, apparently named ‘Avalon Lost’, who just happen to be looking for artwork for their next album cover. A representative from their label, Gary – that’s him in the hat, Gwen points out – has agreed to look at her portfolio next week.

Pride swells in your chest and you beam.

“And you won’t believe it,” she continues, “they’re on the same label as Emrys – _Emrys_ , Arthur! – and they’re going to be the opening act when he plays in town in a couple of months! Gary said they already have tour dates!”

Excitement like the variety that courses through your veins now is foreign to you, to the point where you prod at the cliché, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited for anything in my entire life.” Running a hand through your hair, you shift your weight from foot to foot to try and channel this odd buzz of energy, ending up chuckling for lack of any other expression of mirth.

“Anyway,” says Gwen. “What brings you here at this hour? Not that I’m not happy to see you or anything, but shouldn’t you be at work?”

Oh yeah. Dinner with your father. That’s why you’re here. Your face falls a little.

Gwen notices. “Arthur?”

It takes you a hundred words – mostly consisting of ‘um’ and ‘ah’ and ‘it’s fine if you don’t want to’ and ‘sorry’ – where ten would do to ask what you came here to ask.

“Of course!” Gwen says after you finally manage to stutter out the question. “I’d love to.”

Of course Gwen would be okay with it. You rub the back of your neck. “Right, great.”

She hears your worry in the silence that follows. “You haven’t told me much about him,” she says quietly, after a moment. “Anything in particular I should know?”

That he’s never been interested enough to know about any of your partners before now to want to meet them? That he calls you every year on your birthday, drunk, to blame you for your mother’s death? That he bought _For Arthur_ , despite how he never listens to anything less than Beethoven? “I’m not really sure.” And that’s the honest truth.

You congratulate Gwen on her artwork again and tell her you’ll pick her up after work, if that’s okay. It is, and with a wave you return to work.

Your father’s favourite restaurant doesn’t have space for you when you call to make a reservation, and you’re out of time. You and Gwen are to meet your father at the café where you’d planned dinner for just the two of you. Come five o’clock, the minor ‘This Is Not Good’ vibes hit 8.7 on the Richter scale as you return your comb to your desk draw and check your appearance in the monitor one more time.

You chat with Gwen in the car on the way over – just because you feel nervous doesn’t mean she needs to know about it, or feel the same. You ask her about her day and whatnot. She asks about Lance. He’s fine, you tell her, the two of you wrapped up a project today. Then you complain about the traffic. Talk about the weather. Is your hair still sticking up at the back? (“No, it’s–”) Gwen looks nice, by the way, is that dress new? (“It is, she bought it from–”) Maybe this would have been the day for you to wear the red tie instead of the blue one. (“You look _lovely_ –”) Oh well. Does Gwen mind parking around the corner and walking? You probably won’t get a park out front anyway–

“ _Arthur_. It’s fine.” She pats your knee and gives you a thin smile as you kill the engine.

“Right.” You lean in and press a kiss to her lips.

“Thank you for that,” she says with a note of bewilderment in her voice while you hover close.

“You’re welcome.” You give her one more for good measure.

“We’d better go in or we’ll be late.”

Your father is early – you expected nothing less. In his expensive work suit, he doesn’t fit into the warm blend of coloured cushions on the chairs or the detailed forest-print wallpaper artfully peeling from the wall in places (and neither do you, for that matter; you normally would have changed before a date with Gwen) but if he isn’t oblivious to that fact, he certainly acts it. He’s snagged a quiet table close to the window, and he stands and calls you over, leaving his jacket unbuttoned, as you walk in the door.

“Arthur.” He claps you on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here. I was beginning to wonder if I had the wrong address. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Of course it would be the first time. This is your father you’re talking about. “Father,” you greet stiffly.

“And you must be Gwen,” your father continues seamlessly with a smile that looks…almost genuine. “Arthur’s told me all about you.” He offers his hand.

Have you?

Gwen smiles, but it’s hesitant. Your ears ring with horror. “I think we’ve met before?”

Your father swallows and you see something flash across his eyes. “Yes, I have the feeling we have.”

“Maybe you’ve bought something from the music shop?”

“Ah yes, that could be it.” He pauses. “Perhaps I knew your father?”

“Maybe…” Gwen clears her throat. “Anyway, it’s a pleasure to meet you, sire, uh, sir.”

“Please, Uther is fine.”

You hang suspended between opening your mouth to say something and actually saying something. ‘This is Mr. Uther Drake, of Drake and Gordon Ltd.’: that’s how your father is introduced. Always by someone else and certainly never as ‘Uther’ – that’s reserved for colleagues he met in university days that he converses with at businesses conferences and shares a brandy with at high-to-do functions, not someone he’s just met.

“..eat?”

Hmm?

“I think Arthur’s a bit nervous,” Gwen says with a shaky laugh, and you realise they’ve been talking across you. You blink wide eyes and shift awkwardly inside your jacket, trying to catch up.

Your father laughs outright then as well – an odd, full, rumbling sound that comes from deep in his chest. “I think he is too. Shall we?” He gestures.

Beside you, Gwen nods quickly and moves to follow him, but not before threading her fingers through yours. Her warmth at your side is comforting, and you’re suddenly less reluctant to do as your father suggests.

 

**~**

**[Absolution - Muse](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Muse_-_Absolution_Cover_UK.jpg) **

~

||Don’t kid yourself, and don’t fool yourself; this life could be the last.||

Emrys’s tour is called ‘Two Sides of the Same Coin’, and the London show happens to fall on your birthday. You saw the first poster for it outside the fancy restaurant you and your father ate at and you’ve seen it a thousand times since then: in newspapers, on television, on the website as you waited for the clock to tick over to 9am, when the tickets went on sale.

Somehow, you don’t tire of seeing it. It shows a man, arms limp by his side, shoulders slumped and knee-deep in water watching a rowboat drift down a river, whose banks closest to the man are empty, nothing but trees and grass. As the river stretches further into the distance, buildings begin to appear, first old-style and becoming more and more modern until they are skyscrapers twinkling against the sky.

It’s a poster, only a poster, but there’s something about it. It makes you feel…something. Not happiness like you feel when you look at the tickets, and not the feeling of ease that comes when you play _For Arthur_. It’s more like you’ve forgotten something important.

Gwen’ll be here for dinner soon. You’ve made a salad and managed to cook two steaks (only one needed to be turned over to hide its blackened underside, you’re pleased to report – that’ll be yours). You have two tickets sitting on the kitchen table and despite collecting them eight hours ago, you can feel the excitement that came with them just as keenly now as then. You resist the urge to look at them again – _certainly_ not admire them – since that will ruin the surprise if Gwen catches you. Not that you imagine it will be much of a surprise: you may have mentioned several times over dinner yesterday the significance of this particular day.

Not that any of that really matters when Gwen appears at the door, arms crossed over her chest and avoiding your eyes. She returns your greeting quietly, biting her bottom lip.

You forget about the tickets altogether when she says, “Arthur, there’s something I need to talk to you about…”

After a small amount of time, you’ll close the door behind Gwen. The kitchen will be quiet as you survey it, taking in the uneaten food and the stillness of the curtains since you fixed that faulty seal in the window. You’ll collect the plates and carry them towards the bin, but one will accidentally slip from your fingers and shatter on the floor; the other will follow more purposefully. You’ll kick the pieces, then, sending them scrabbling across the floor with clangs and clatters, and then you’ll reach for the tickets and pick them up and tear them into pieces, and let them flutter to the ground with a shout resonating heartache.

Right now, Gwen says, “I’m sorry.”

Later, you run your fingers through your hair. You collect the pieces of the tickets and place them on the table. You trudge through the debris of broken crockery to your bedroom where you collapse on the bed fully clothed, and by the time the clock ticks ‘Really Sodding Late’ the next morning, you haven’t slept a wink. Neither have you found the motivation to move, so you don’t.

It’s the knocking at the door that finally pulls you out of bed. Lance takes one look at you and sighs.

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” he says. For what it’s worth, he sounds genuine. That doesn’t stop you from closing the door in his face.

Lance is having none of it, though. He somehow manages to put his foot in the door and push his way inside. You shout at him and demand to know what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, and tell him to leave you alone.

“I know you don’t want to talk to me,” he says, to which you snort and ask, well, why is he here? “Gwen called me. She doesn’t want you to get in trouble at work because of her.”

“Why should she care?” Your voice is low and dry and gravelly.

“Because she’s your friend,” Lance says, not missing a beat, “and it may surprise you to know that friends care about those sorts of things.” He tells you to have a shower while he finds you something to eat, and that with luck you might be able to blame your lateness on traffic. It seems childish to refuse so, despite how it irks you, you comply.

Lance hands you a slice of toast and waves a travel mug of tea when you emerge. You hold the toast in your teeth as you lift your jacket from where it hangs on the back of the kitchen chair and shrug it on. Your kitchen is looking cleaner than it did when you last saw it, but you don’t say anything.

“Got your wallet? Keys? Phone?”

You pat your pockets as Lance runs through the list. Yes, yes and yes. You’re about as ready to stumble into today as you’ll ever be. You’re about to follow Lance towards the door, but the pile of torn cardboard catches your attention. Only after sweeping the pieces into your hand do you then join him in the hallway.

“What’s that?” Lance asks.

“Nothing.” You drop the pieces into the bin as you pull the door to your flat closed behind you.

Your father’s not at work today for some reason. With no one to reprimand you on your tardiness or give you an overdue _I told you so,_ you may as well have stayed in bed. Your day passes in a hum of people talking (but not to you) and the slow swell of the photocopier down the hall, in the buzz of telephones and the dreadfully slow _doof_ and _tsch_ of the countdown until you can go home again.

Five o’clock finally arrives, eased in with far more caffeine than is usually required. You’re about to go home when Lance places a letter on desk, your name on the front in Gwen’s handwriting. It’s petty spite that makes you tip it into the bin.

Lance removes it immediately and stabs you in the chest with it. “I never pegged you for a coward, Drake,” he says. “Read it.” Lance swings his satchel over his shoulder and leaves again.

You need to collapse into your office chair before you can open it. It’s worse than you had hoped: a man stands amidst shadows, staring up at the sky, gasmask in hand, the album title written in the corner. The note is brief:

 

_Arthur, I know it must have sounded crazy, but I can’t lie to you.  
I can't lie to myself, either. I just need some time to figure things out.  
I really am sorry. I hope we can be friends._

_–Gwen_

And there’s a single ticket. Emrys, _Two Sides of the Same Coin._

You’ve been a prat, well and truly. A self-centred, inconsiderate prat.

You stop at the bottle shop on the way home that evening, buying the biggest bottle of gin you can carry.  You crack the lid in an alleyway and take the first few sips there; the next few you take standing behind bushes or hunched next to street lights; the few after that you glance around to see if anyone’s watching, and after that you don’t even care anymore. Tomorrow, you’ll remember that your car is sitting in a parking space that had a strict one hour limit and that while you’ll be lucky enough not to get towed, you certainly have a fine pay. Not that you’ll care about anything besides the enormous headache you’ll have.

Where were you walking, again? You’re not sure you knew to begin with. The only thing you know is that you continue to enjoy the burn of the gin as it traces a finger down your throat and if you didn’t have movement in your legs, you’d probably fall over and not move for a considerable amount of time. Sobriety puts in its two cents to say that doing that would be a bad idea.

The suburban streets are still, sparsely lit and herding a breeze that makes you wish you’d thought to bring a scarf. Or a jacket, for that matter. (You were wearing one when you left your office, but it’s gone now. You’ve no idea where.) You stop to read a street sign, tilting your head back and squinting, catching yourself as the world lurches at the change of perspective before you shrug and begin to follow the numbers down the road anyway.

This is a nice house that you’ve come to. Big. Clean. With thinking much you knock on the door, taking a good mouthful of gin while you wait for the occupant to answer. If you’d been listening, you would have heard the grumbling of someone thoroughly unamused and the stomping footsteps of someone unnecessarily disturbed. You would have heard those things become silent as the person looked through the peephole.

The door is thrown open. Your father stares at you.

“Arthur?”

You blink, as surprised to see him as he is to see you. Not only that, here he is in his pyjamas and dressing gown – a man you were sure, _adamant_ even, hadn’t worn that sort of thing for twenty-three years or so. You use this moment of confusion to check your watch. Give it a tap. Surely that’s not the time…but numbers remain the same regardless of your efforts. God, you need a drink. You take one.

Now fortified, you suppose if the time’s no mistake, your father in his pyjamas make sense: it _is_ arse o’clock in the morning, after all.

“Arthur? What’s wrong?”

“I’m _nn_ not drunk.” You really are drunk.

Your father studies you, brow furrowed, eyes harsh and scrutinising. Lecture face, you can tell.

Then, “You didn’t drive here, did you?” He pushes past you to look at the driveway and up and down the street, relaxing slightly when he doesn’t see your car.

“It doesn’t matter, I’m not drunk.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Did you walk all the way here?” Your father ushers you inside.

You show yourself through to the sitting room, with its lush couches and its huge bookshelves filled with nothing but classics and its liquor cabinet with nothing but the best vintages. You snort. “I didn’t know you cared.”

Your father follows close behind you, saying nothing in reply. That’s okay, you’ll be the one doing the talking this time. That, you remember, is why you are here. You swallow another mouthful.

“Is there something wrong, Arthur?”

Swig. “Yup.” You begin to look closely at everything that seems like it could be looked closely at. Awards for business. Crystal glasses. A shelf of vinyl records. Perfect, everything absolutely perfect, nothing broken at all. Drink. “She broke up with me.” You would’ve noticed your father’s face fall, had you not been examining every useless thing you could see, and his chest heave a sigh. “I’m a great friend,” you explain, noticing your father hasn’t said anything. That’s okay, you’ll do the talking here (is that an idea that’s occurred to you before?). “And we’re going to stay friends. Sh-she said…” gulp, “she said, “you’re fun to be around, Arthur, I like hanging out with you and talking with you and…and hanging out with you, but I just want to be friends.” She said because…” Your eyes glaze and you flop backwards onto the couch. “She said because sometimes she feels like she remembers having feelings for Lance, she _remembers_ loving Lance and not just me.” You snort. “Lance and not. Lancelot. That’s funny.” You jump to your feet again, wavering when you get there, and shout at your father, “but not _that_ funny!” Your father was never laughing. That hardly concerns you, though, as you slump back on the couch, drained, and resort to staring at the ceiling.

You don’t know why you’ve never come here on nights like this before, you tell your father, it’s really comfortable on this couch. “Much more comfortable than…hmm…” Sip. “..than the last time I got drunk on stuff that tasted this bad.”

Your father folds his arms over his chest. “When was that, Arthur?” he asks.

“Sophia.” ‘S’ for Sophia; ‘s’ for secret. You were never ever going to tell your father about Sophia; he’d’ve snorted and said that it served you right for trusting her with your heart, because he’d told you time and time again how awful things happen to people who do that, and you would’ve been even more angry and sad and confused because he’d have been right, and you had been so _sure_ that he wasn’t.

That’s okay. You’ve caught yourself. You won’t tell him how, “Sophia just wanted me for my money and sex and when I asked her why she wanted them and not _me_ she just collected her things and left.” You sniff. You won’t tell him just how much, “it hurt. I was angry at how she thought I was just good for nice dinners and presents and the occasional good fuck.” Luckily, he’ll never find out how, “you were right when you said I shouldn’t trust anyone with my heart.” It sounds so corny aloud you almost giggle. Did your father really say that?

“I never said that.”

You _do_ giggle. “You would’ve, if you’d known Sophia.” You wave the bottle in emphasis and some of the pungent liquid inside splashes onto the couch – only a little, since you’ve drunk far enough down, but the alcohol burns through your moment of humour like acid. “S-sorry.” You apologise, freezing still and staring fearfully at your father, like the time he caught you rifling through some old boxes of pictures in the attic when you were young. You expect to be dragged out by your ear and be left on your own for a week again. But your father simply stares at you in a peculiar way that you’re not in the best state of mind to interpret, or even properly register. When he steps forward to take the bottle of gin from your hand, you don’t resist.

“You must be angry at Gwen,” your father says slowly, after a while.

Shaking your head, you pull a cushion into your arms and hug it close. “I can’t be angry at Gwen,” you reply. “She says her new memories confuse her, and she doesn’t want to lead me or Lance on, so she’s taking some time to figure things out. She’s a good person, and I love her too much to be angry at her.” You set the pillow aside and pat it four times. “I do. I love her. Even if she loves Lance. Even if she remembers things I don’t.”

There’s silence between you. Brow furrowed, you look at your hands, as though realising for the first time something’s missing. “When I came here, did I have a…?” You make a drinking gesture and as you do, you notice your hands are shaking. Your father nods minutely, slowly, in response. “Oh,” you say, “I thought I forgot.”

You defer to your father for a decisive verdict, for judgement, for explanation. The man who stares back at you has circles underlining tired eyes and hair tipping on the grey balance towards white, and he catches your breath and forms a lump in your throat that you haven’t the energy or wherewithal to fight. It’s this man who sits on the couch next to you and pulls you to his chest, rubbing soothing motions across your back. You don’t notice the man’s own hand shaking; you don’t register the absence of expensive cologne on his clothes; you don’t hear the shaky words that he tells you. You’re exhausted, and so you let the gin and your sadness and confusion push you down and cover you in darkness.

 

**~**

**[On Letting Go - Circa Survive](http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/5392/cover_11482032010.jpg) **

||Did you ever wish you were somebody else?||

~

Morning comes tapping on the outside of your eyelids; your killer hangover comes tapping on the inside. Unmoving, you open your eyes a sliver, enough to realise you’re nowhere you recognise immediately. You’d sit bolt upright, check for your wallet, phone, keys and signs of humiliation and/or the need to send flowers, if only your head didn’t hurt so much. Keeping your eyes open and your mouth from making embarrassing sounds of your self-inflicted pain is hard enough without all of that. The couch (you can feel the dip between cushions) is comfortable and the blanket (pulled up to your chin) is warm, soft; you can stay just a minute longer.

This is your father’s house, you remember when you eventually heave yourself into a sitting position and stare numbly around the room. Everything’s as it was last night, except there’s things you hadn’t noticed. A black and white picture of your grandmother and grandfather holding a small blonde girl on the shelf beside the liquor cabinet and crystal glasses. A Mathalon trophy engraved with _Under 12’s Winner_ beside the sparkling business award. A small pile of CDs near the shelf of vinyl records, Emrys’s _For Arthur_ at the top. You fold the blanket as best you can with vision like a ship in foul weather and, stepping over your shoes placed neatly at one end of the couch, you follow the noise coming from the kitchen.

Your father has his back to you. He’s wearing his work suit, shoes shined and briefcase sitting open on the bench. He moves purposefully, like you’ve seen him at work: he places a stack of documents in the briefcase, he files another in the plastic tray next to the bowl of apples; he fastens his tie with sharp, exact movements and re-combs already styled hair. With the same precision, he shakes pills from three different bottles into his hand and swallows them with a sip of tea. You wonder what they’re for, but you don’t ask.

“Good morning,” you say when you feel too uncomfortable to continue watching unnoticed, your throat scratchy.

“Arthur.” Your father puts his tea mug in the sink quickly. “Good morning.” There’s a moment of awkward silence that makes your cheeks redden with shame for something you can’t articulate. You’re not sure what to expect anymore. “How’s the head?”

The “sore” you mumble is positively unintelligible, if not inaudible, but your father pours you a glass of water and passes it to you with two aspirin. You swallow them and stand idly. You wonder (possibly aloud, you’ll realise in a moment) how you got here.

“You don’t remember?” Your father fiddles with the buttons of his sleeves, but you don’t miss the crackling of his curiosity as it burns in his eyes.

“I remember buying the gin,” you offer instead of a direct answer. You wipe a hand across your eyes, swaying on your feet: you place the glass of water on the table before you drop it.

“Nothing else?” Why is your father looking at you like that?

Is there something in particular you should remember?

“Right.” Straightening his jacket, your father clears his throat. “I don’t suppose you’d like anything to eat?”

God no. Anything you could eat would make a reappearance. You groan, a response which seems to amuse your father somewhat.

Your phone vibrates in your pocket. It’s Lance, wanting to know if he needs to drag you out of bed again this morning. When you tell him no, he’s not convinced. If you’d been on the other end of the phone with yourself, you doubt you’d have been convinced either. Regardless, you promise that you’ll be in at work of your own accord, maybe late and maybe less than bright-eyed and bushy-tailed but you’ll be there. Lance concedes, but texts you ten minutes later to make sure your resolve has lasted that long. Perhaps the man smelled your hangover through the phone. It’s very possible that he had.

The time, subtle black numbers on the digital clock on the wall, waits for you to notice it. You dissolve into a frenzy, then. Pull on your shoes. Flatten your hair. Drink the rest of the glass of water (that’s breakfast enough, surely). Where the bloody hell did you put your jacket? You’ll have to drive today to get to work on time – oh but wait, you can’t do that, you’re hungover, you’ll have to catch the train then. Apologise for the inconvenience you caused your father; apologise for saying the things you don’t remember saying. Your phone’s just about out of battery – hopefully, someone at work will have a charger. For god’s sake, _where_ is your jacket?

“Arthur.” Your father picks up his briefcase. “I’ll drive you home. You can get changed and come in after that.”

You blink, and blink again.

You walked to school on your first day and caught the bus home after being handed your high school certificate. You took the Tube to the airport the first time you travelled abroad and you caught a cab from the hospital when you broke your arm in a car accident. Now, you are a little pathetic and a lot hungover and he offers to drive you home? It’s unexpected, to say the least. You numbly thank your father and follow him to the garage.

The drive passes in a blur. The people on the footpath bustling across tarmac to the frenzied melody of traffic lights, the honking of car horns seeking to clear the gridlock, jackhammers drilling into the road like a dentist at a decayed tooth…you close your eyes against them, swaying inside the car as it moves in one metre increments.

You may have fallen asleep but you wake when your father turns off the car. It’s just a word of goodbye to your father, then a short walk up the stairs to your flat. Quick. Simple. You can do this.

The apology you offer is feeble in tone but satisfactory in content. As you fumble with the door handle, you inform your father you’ll be in the office in around an hour and, eventually, you even manage to tumble out of the car.

“Wait a minute.” The boot clicks open and, climbing out of the driver’s seat, your father reaches in. He pulls out an old cardboard box, dusty, weathered with dents from being pushed aside in the attic to make room for newer, shinier things. Of course your father’s intentions are clear but when he presses the box into your hands, you’re not entirely sure what to do with it. “I need to tell you something.”

You‘re itching to know what it is, but you wait for your father to continue of his own accord.

“I could never tell her ‘no’.”

You frown in confusion but daren’t interrupt. After all, ‘her’ can only be one of two people you know of, and you don’t think it’s Gwen.

“Your mother. I’m afraid you’ve taken after me in that respect, what with Gwen and Sophia…and Vivian.” Oh god, you told your father about Sophia? (And ‘Vivian’? The name rings a bell, but you’re not entirely sure you know any Vivians.) Your face goes red like cloaks billowing against the wind. You’re at a desperate loss here, but as your father meets your eyes, your heart shudders to a standstill and suddenly you not only dare not interrupt, you also don’t _want_ to. He’s talking about your _mother_ – on a day that isn’t your birthday, without liquid courage or disappointment permeating his every word.

“She, uh,” your father continues, “..your mother had a medical condition that made it dangerous for her to have children, but when she fell pregnant with you, she was determined to have you anyway.” He swallows thickly and you can tell it’s a conscious effort for him to keep going. You hope he does. “When she died giving birth to you, I couldn’t be angry with her. I loved her too much. So I blamed you instead.” Your shoulders stiffen. “I was…That was…wrong of me.”

It’s startling, hearing those words from his mouth.

“I’m glad you came to me last night.” Your father is silent for a moment before nodding minutely and turning away to return to his car.

You can’t…You say…words? You hastily (clumsily) shuffle the box to the crook of one arm and open the lid. “What’s this?”

Your father pauses with his keys in hand and pales in reply.

The box is filled with paper, some of it the most beautiful material you’ve seen. But the first page that jumps into your hand is a lined page torn skilfully from its binding. Your eyes narrow and your mouth falls open slightly as you stare. It’s a drawing, drawn freehand in a red biro: a grand castle brought to life in the afternoon sun, the weathering of its stone and the shadows that it cast as clear as though captured in a photograph. You stare at it warily, then up at your father, then at the page again. You’re drawn to the signature at the edge: _Y. du Bois._ Your father clears his throat. “Just some old things I thought you might be interested in. I’ll see you in an hour.” He climbs into his car quickly and drives away.

Hangover almost forgotten (not entirely), you hurry up the stairs and inside your flat. The door is left swinging open; you’re in too much of a hurry to close it properly. You drop to your knees and empty the box across the floor, paper going everywhere with a flutter and a sigh. From foolscap to heavy gauge, from serviettes and receipts to A4 canvases, they’re all there, each filled with smudged charcoal or watercolours or simple graphite and discreetly signed.

They’re all beautiful – dragons in flight and unicorns deep in forests, goblets of wine lost amidst grand feasts and four-poster beds with crimson drapes, open fields and rolling hills. You’ll look at each and every one later but one of them stands out as different. A Polaroid photograph, its colours faded, slips from the mix, catching your eye. Two people occupy it. One’s clearly your father, albeit as a much younger and less-weathered man, and the other’s a woman with long, blonde hair pinned to her ears by a knitted beanie and trickling down over a scarf wrapped around her neck. She’s smiling into the eyes of your father, who’s smiling back unguarded, without a trace of the frown lines now on his forehead. The only lines at all are those crinkling around his eyes and the dimples at the corners of his mouth.

You drop the picture, hurry to the kitchen. Shakily set the coffee machine to brew. Splash your face with water – you haven’t time to take a shower now. Take off the day-old shirt and replace it with a clean and fresh one, one that bears as much trace of last night as your memories. Down the coffee in four sips. Ignore the skin of your mouth it burns away. The photograph is captured in your mind’s eye and you’re forced to stare at it there despite how you try and refuse, because this picture is proof of something you’ve missed, you’ve feared all along – you just forgot. You search your past and try and find the one false assumption that you made, the exact moment where you lead yourself to believe a lie – that none of this was your fault. When was it? When you were old enough to drink? When you moved out of home? When your father became your colleague, your boss, and little more than that?

Your father…

He loved your mother. And you tookher from him.

You won’t be going in to the office today.

You forget about the clean suit you were going to put on to match your clean shirt and opt for a pair of jeans instead. Careful not to crush any of them, you place the pages back into the box. You close the door behind you as you leave your flat, stepping out of the building and onto the street.

This is the coffee shop where you used to find yourself with Gwen, the one that plays indie rock and roll. It’s easy enough for you to tuck yourself away inconspicuously with a drink you don’t really feel like and soon you lose yourself in the charcoal smudges and gradient graphite and ink and watercolour. You think of the woman in the photograph, brow furrowed and gnawing on her lip like you do when you’re concentrating. You imagine her tutting when she draws a line in the wrong place and huffing as she moves to fix it the same way you do when you notice errors in your spreadsheets. You picture long fingers coloured with ink and the strange angles she uses her pen at in order to keep them from staining the page accidentally, like you do when you try and fix your office printer by yourself.

It’d be nice to live in the world created by your mother, the long grasses and calming streams, the sunsets overlooking entire cities, the columns of smoke that rose in white plumes and evolved into horses running against the sky. Every once in a while, your vision glazes over and you think you can envision scenes just out of frame of what she’s drawn: you can smell sweat and feel your sore muscles and hear horses whinny. And yet, you can’t hold on to any of those sensations. The longing they inspire in your chest feels like homesickness, drifting beyond your control. Your drink has gone cold.

“You’re late for work.”

You look up at the source of the voice, and say well clearly you’re not the only one skivving. Lance is here, after all.

“It’s past one, you know. I’m entitled to lunch.” Lance slides into the seat opposite you and as if on cue, a waiter places a sandwich in front of Lance before turning to you and asking if he can “get you anything, sir.” He can’t.

You place the page in your hand face down on the table.

Lance picks up another, one closer to him, and studies it. “Did you do these?” he wants to know. You don’t answer. Lance looks up and turns your eyes over in his own, as though he’s solving a Rubik’s cube. Maybe the pieces of the puzzle slide into place. Maybe Lance isn’t solving what he think he’s solving.

“When do you get the inspiration for these?” Lance is sure he knows the answer, you can tell, and this question is just a dramatic display of his logic. You let him respond to his own question. “The scenes just come to you, don’t they? When you’re at work…” He points at a piece of printer paper, “..or just before you go to sleep…” then a page torn out of a magazine, “..or waiting at a restaurant?” and a paper napkin.

(Lance perhaps chooses not to notice that the printer paper still has a row of holes lining the whitespace and a serrated line separating pages, and the fact that the glossy page is from a magazine dated over twenty years ago, and that the napkin has long since begun yellowing.)

He also seems to expect an answer; he has to know he’s never going to get one, and certainly not the one he’s searching for.

“I see them too,” Lance says suddenly. “They’re a little different but I see them. Billowing, red cloaks. Campfires kindled in ruins. Griffins, wilddeoren, large as life. A man whose eyes glow gold.”

You don’t see anything. These are your mother’s, and you don’t see anything, you tell him. You’ve nothing so finite, nothing in so solid a shape. What you have is different. You have the _schink_ of metal hitting metal. You have the _clop clop clop_ of hooves across stone. You have the roar of a fire, the crackling sound of wood as it burns. You have the sound of a voice as it asks you to, “stay with me,” and the odd feeling that you never did.

Lance doesn’t push you after that. The sympathy he offers comes in the form of a phone call to the office, informing the receptionist who answers that he suspects the sushi he had for lunch has given him food poisoning and that he shall not be returning to work until tomorrow. A part of you wishes that Lance would just bugger off home or back to work as you pack up your things but, no, he will hover a small distance from you for the rest of the afternoon as you locate your car and pluck the parking ticket out from under the windscreen wiper, then as you pull your jacket from a puddle in a side street. He’ll wait while you pay for the magazine adorned with the heading, “Who _is_ Arthur?: exclusive interview about the muse behind Emrys’s platinum-selling album.” He will lend you his phone to text Gwen to see if she’ll talk to you, (the battery on yours will have died) and then make himself scarce when you deliver the apology for your pettiness and selfishness and all those other words you’d thought about yourself the other night when you were not-drunk. You will thank Gwen for the ticket, and for her honesty, like you should have done in the first place.

And that will be that.

 

**~**

**[This Will Destroy You - Young Mountain](http://www.soundstagedirect.com/media/this_will_destroy_you_young_mountains.jpg) **

||I believe in your victory.||

~

Your life returns to some sort of uneasy normalcy, like putting on an old jumper you thought was comfortable after wearing a new one for a while. Its fleece borders on itchy and it isn’t as warm as you remember it being; it doesn’t make you look to others like you thought it did and now you notice the expressions of people as they try and pass curiosity off as insignificant glances. You ignore all of it and reason that, since it’s old and you’ve been living in it for years, it’s as good as anything you could ever want.

Gwen and you stay friends. When she finishes up a new album cover, you buy the album regardless of whether or not you like the music. When the record label gives her a contract for band photography and cover artwork, you and her and Lance meet up to celebrate; when the artwork she did for Avalon Lost is nominated for an award, you throw the wildest party you can manage with only the three of you and Morgana and Mordred and Elyan. Gwen still sends you Emrys interviews she finds and you still send her album covers (which may or may not be carefully moderated to ensure that nothing is said about your state of mind or private longing). When you part for the evening, you often move to hug her. You stop yourself, just in time, sometimes.

You and your father are on agreeable terms. More and more often, when he leaves you messages regarding a query in the purview of your department, they’re handwritten. Just once, he signs one of them ‘your father’ instead of with his usual ‘Uther Drake, Drake and Gordon Ltd.’ stamp. When the two of you next eat out, on the only day that week your father is at work, you may or may not accidentally call him ‘dad’. (He reacts only minutely, and you make sure not to do that again.)

You stand in line at the bottle shop, bottle of cabernet sauvignon in one hand and a grocery bag of fettuccini in the other. You hum along to Emrys’s ‘Stay With Me’ as it plays over the radio.

It’s amidst all this the night of the concert – and your birthday –  sneaks up on you. You’re unproductive at work the whole day, nothing but _For Arthur_ running through your head. Your sweaty fingers peck away the keyboard anyway and you sloppily autograph the pages that need your attention. When the lack of things being done becomes an insult to your resolve that no you are not nervous that’s ridiculous you are most definitely excited about tonight, you steel the tremor in your knees and fetch a cup of tea because that will fix everything.

This is _certainly not_ nervousness. You don’t get nervous, and why should you? You’ve waited months for this. You know every song. You’ve read every interview. Emrys’s music has played in the background of your life since you heard that song on your birthday last year. It can’t be nervousness.

You’ve already changed out of the suit you wear to work when there’s a knock at the door, come the end of business hours. Your father enters to tell you that you have paperwork overdue.

“Just about done,” you placate.

“Make sure everything’s resolved before you leave.” Your father brushes a crease out of his left sleeve and straightens his jacket, and you assure him that you will. Then, practically comatose, you thank him when he hopes you, “have a good time tonight,” and wishes you a, ”happy birthday.” He grips your hand firmly, lingering slightly longer than necessary, looking at you with something that looks a little like pride.

“I have…something.” Your father reaches into his jacket pocket. As he holds it out to you, slightly hesitant, you take it.

It’s the cover of _For Arthur_ , printed on beautiful paper and carefully stitched onto a square envelope on matching paper. Across the lighter colours, in your father’s handwriting and the fountain pen he uses for all his important documents, is a note: _I believe you’ll find what you’re searching for._ You stare up at him, speechless.  

Your father’s face has turned a flustered shade. “Don’t read the letter now, for heaven’s sake,” he says.

“Where did you…?” Get the idea from? (You don’t think the last part was remotely audible.)

“Gwen.”

“Oh.” A while after that, you manage to add, “Th-Thank you.” You think you’d like to say something else, but you can’t think what. An awkward silence would be nicely complemented by an awkward hug, except your father looks tired enough to crash on the visitors’ couch in the office waiting room and you don’t want to keep him any longer. There’ll be plenty of other chances. You’ll put the envelope in your pocket in a moment as you leave, but for right now:

“See you tomorrow. Father.” (You take a breath, clear your throat.) “Dad.”

*

The air around you is abuzz long before you make your way through the sea of Emrys tour shirts and people jumping and singing to Avalon Lost as they play onstage. You weave through easily enough, brushing by but not shoving until you’re at the barrier. People pay you no mind: you are alone and they’re all in their groups of excited twos or threes or fours and you’re slightly above average height but you’re at the furthermost right corner, so you’re still within spitting distance of the stage but you’re just enough removed. You think. Hopefully.

When the band’s set finishes, you applaud along with the others, not erratic with fanaticism but not as though you’re showing polite appreciation to an amateur performance of _La Boheme_ either. The instrument techs begin to change out the equipment, and you wait.

Black cables. Duct tape. Sound checks.  They all seem endless.

So when you first see Emrys, you don’t realise it’s him. Nobody else seems to, either. He’s just a fellow backstage, dressed in worn black jeans and a blue buttoned shirt (only visible to you because you’re right at the edge of the barrier and can see into the wings) who’s slipping on an earpiece and fidgeting more than you would have expected from a practiced musician. You’ve seen pictures of him, of course: pictures online, a few professional but most amateur photographs of him walking out of buildings or reading newspapers in coffee shops, given his penchant for artwork on covers and across magazine spreads over anything else (all taken as an afterthought, like their photographers hadn’t realised who he was until the very last second possible, and even then they still weren’t quite sure so they just watched from afar). And then there’s the interviews you watched him give on Youtube, well, he wasn’t really real in any of those because you saw him on _Youtube_ , which automatically made him a fictional character that was created so you thought you knew him when he was actually just a distortion of a memory.

That’s how you stare at him now. Your brow knits in momentary disbelief, then you simply watch blankly, and then you find yourself smiling. You’re sure, beyond reason. This is him – Emrys.

When he steps out onto the stage, it’s with little pretence or build-up or warning. He doesn’t need it. The house lights dim and the noise of the crowd skyrockets and Emrys steps into a waiting spotlight with a microphone in hand. The drummer, bassist and guitarist are taking up their places in the darkness but they’re irrelevant. As Emrys takes a deep breath and sings the first four notes, _everything_ else is irrelevant.

As this song and the next gain momentum, the audience dances and sings all the words that they know and you watch silently. The music that’s pumped out of the speaker is different than the music that’s wrung from your tiny laptop speakers: every note, every beat is the same and yet it’s more than the pure volume that worms its way under your skin and retimes your heartbeat. This is _real_. Emrys is not just a name or a voice coming out of a stereo, or a surreal image or an idea. He is something you can see, something you could reach out and touch if only you were close enough.

So Emrys plays his songs and eventually you’re singing along with everyone else in the crowd. You’re getting sweaty with all these people in such close proximity, and there could have been a time where that would have bothered you but you don’t really care anymore. You’re applauding for the end of another song when Emrys ducks his head in appreciation and begins to move to the very front of the stage – and falls flat on his face. There’s a collective hiss of concern, but Emrys turns red, picks himself up, laughs and comments offhand at the mortifying embarrassment he’ll feel as soon as he steps out of view of the audience, and that collective hiss of concern morphs into a collective chortle of relief.

You expect Emrys to shake off the blush in his cheeks and start the next song – after all, he’s here to share his music. Instead, he sits with his legs swinging over the edge of the stage, like a kid sharing cookies with his mother at the kitchen table rather than a musician commanding the attention of upwards of ten thousand people. When he next speaks into the microphone, it’s as though he’s chatting to the next person in line while waiting to pay for his groceries and not speaking through four million dollars’ worth of sound equipment and infrastructure. He scans the audience that’s hanging on his every word, and you can hear the squeals, cheers, hollers when he meets their eyes. He thanks them for coming, hopes they’re having a good time. He asks them to bear with him as he takes a break for a minute longer because the truth is, he says as a note of sadness plays over his face, he’s looking for someone.

And you’ve sung and cheered with everyone else in this auditorium tonight, but now the others are only making noise because they’re not quite sure what else to do. Emrys searches the sea of faces in front of him for long minutes, and all the while you’re quiet. You just listen.

And then you have an idea. You pull the envelope from your pocket, take out the letter inside. Suddenly, you realise that strange feeling you felt when your father handed you this was happiness; even more suddenly, you realise that Emrys needs that happiness more than you do right now. You have the ability to drown out his note of sadness with a melody in hope.

You put the letter your father wrote (you haven’t read it yet) back in your pocket and fold the cover of _For Arthur_ into the smallest square you can manage. You throw it with all your strength and watch as it soars through the air towards Emrys; you imagine the clang of brass as it bounces off his head and lands on the stage beside him. You’re sure you can hear the crackle of confusion burning in his eyes as he puts down the microphone so he can unfold the note and smooth out the creases. Emrys studies the cover for _For Arthur_ and you see his lips form the words, “I believe you’ll find what you’re looking for”. His brow furrows; he looks up and searches for you, and you wonder if you should draw attention to yourself in case he demands to know who you are. But you don’t, and he doesn’t, and instead you stare unmoving as Emrys looks in your general direction.

“Thank you.”

And your heart swells because you know those two words are only for you. Beyond doubt.

Emrys gets to his feet. The next song he plays will be the last for the night.

After the applause has died out and it’s clear that all cries for an encore will be unfulfilled, people begin to leave. You trickle out slower than most: you hope to catch another glimpse of Emrys as you did the first time you saw him, sidestage, with neither his earpiece nor show face, without having to share him with the masses, but you don’t. Regardless, as you return to your car, you decide that’s fine. More than fine, you’re happy. You have music surging around your system and a spring in your step. Emrys is real, and you’ve given him something he was looking for, even if it was just some words on a piece of paper.

Then your phone rings, and you answer it.

“Is this Arthur Drake?”

“It is,” you reply lightly.

A beat of silence. “My name is Gaius. I’m a doctor at St. George’s hospital. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

You

News

What?

Who is this?

Who _is_ this?

No.

You’ll be there.

And you do get there, to the hospital, but you don’t remember how. You follow a woman through sterile corridors and locked doors and darkened rooms until you reach a nurse’s station. There’s a white-haired man leaning on the desk, who looks up when he hears footsteps. He removes his glasses and places them in his pocket, carefully approaching you.

 “Arthur,” he says quietly. “You look exactly the same.”

You don’t know what he means by that. This man must be Gaius, who you spoke to on the phone.

“Yes, and a friend of your father’s.” You blink. “You don’t remember me?”

You don’t. You don’t care. Your voice is thickening in your throat. You just want to know what happened.

A heart attack, you’re told, and this time there just wasn’t anything they could do.

This time?

Yes, your father had been in hospital for two heart attack-like events in the past year. He was taking medication to manage his condition. You didn’t know?

You’re numb. Maybe you did know. You should have seen signs, somewhere, you should have seen them. He should have told you; you could have asked. “Can I…Can I see him?”

Gaius hesitates. “Do you have someone you can call? A friend?” He places a hand on your shoulder. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

It’s late. You don’t want to wake Gwen or Lance. There’s no one else you can call.

No one else? Questions Gaius, raising an eyebrow, concerned.

No.

Well, Gaius is sure that Guinevere and Lancelot will understand and he offers to call them for you.

No. You’ll do it. Just…you need a minute. To process everything. To understand.

Your voice is quiet, husky, your hands quiver. “I need to see him.”

Gaius nods once and leads you to a room. The door is closed and there’s a sign prohibiting unauthorised personnel from entering. You hesitate; Gaius places a hand on your shoulder and pushes the door open for you.

 Your footsteps are out of time, stumbling, slow, clumsy. A single fluorescent bulb lights the room from above the bed in the middle, casting shadows on everything but your father, showing his pale lips and his grey skin, they’re like wax, real but they’re missing something, something that you never realised they needed. And the _quiet,_ god, you never realised how noisy breathing was until it wasn’t there anymore and this is not like you imagined it, there were supposed to be people murmuring or sirens wailing, people trying to do something to help. This wasn’t supposed to happen on your birthday, first your mother now your father, why does your being alive mean everybody you love should go away in the end? You weren’t even there for him, for god’s sake, _god_ , you never got to hear him tell you that he’d always loved you and that he was sorry he hadn’t been the best of fathers and you didn’t have the chance to forgive him and say “no, you can’t die” and he didn’t say “I’m proud of you” nor you “stay with me, I need you” because you _do_ need him, you need to know the man who didn’t call you drunk on your birthday to blame you for your mother’s death but the man who bought a copy of _For Arthur_ and was trying to mend fences and you were only just getting to know him…

You take one of your father’s hands in both of your own, hold it tight. Press a kiss to his forehead. Your lip trembles as you collapse into the chair at his bedside. Breathe, hiccup. Try again.

“I’m here, father.”

The first of your tears spill then and a sob heaves from your chest. The first of many tonight.

 

**~**

**[Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions](http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/legacy/guitarist/Top5_Biffy.jpg) **

||It’s you and me ‘til the end of time.|

~

You do so much in the next three months. Often, it’s hard enough just moving your eyes about in their sockets let alone rolling from your bed to face your lack of direction in the cold of your flat instead of the warmth of your sheets. Countless cups of tea turn cold in your hands as you stare into nothing. Countless hours pass across the television playing on mute.

But funeral homes never called themselves, neither did companies that now was missing one senior partner nor uncles you’d never really known but who needed to be informed anyway. Your father’s house didn’t clear itself out and put itself on the market, and his finances and final affairs did not take care of themselves. You herded phone calls from people you didn’t know who sounded like they were making inquiries after a lost order of office supplies rather than offering sympathies and made phone calls of your own, sounding pathetic in all of them. You read the letter your father gave you the night he died, the one that started with, “I remember everything” and ended with, “I believe you’ll find what you’re searching for.”

But you did it, you did it all, while feeling as though there was sand pulsing through your veins and sitting in the back of your throat.

And then, all of a sudden, you realise it’s done, and here you are. You wait in line holding a copy of Emrys’s new album, _Set in Stone._ The music store is filled with people waiting eagerly for their _moment_. The moment when Emrys will ask each of them their name and greet them by it, and shake their hands and thank them for listening to his work because that’s the sort of man he is. The moment he’ll sign the copy of the album they shakily place in front of him and send them away with a brush with fame to boast to their friends about.

You have no intention of being any of that. You’ll give him a name that won’t be yours as you shake his hand, and you’ll not tremble an inch when you hand him the album to sign. You’ll refuse to listen when he tries to thank you for listening to his work because no, you should be thanking him as his music spoke to you in a way that nothing else had. This afternoon, Gwen and Lance will ask you how it went, and you will tell them “fine” and nothing else, because that moment will be yours and yours alone.

The queue is lined with red nylon ropes that will hold no one back at a push and security guards that will hold but one at a time.

You watch as best you can from your place in the line. Emrys saves a smile that dimples his cheeks for person after person who steps forward. He has a kind word for all of them – you can see the effect it has on the people who arrived first and waited longest, and the ones further back who are just as excited.

His thanks are genuine, his handshakes are firm and he is more than happy to sign the albums. He takes the flowers, smells every one of them, the gifts and the homemade cards, but there’s something missing. It’s in his eyes, an emptiness.

And then a young man steps up to the table and gives his name – _Arthur_ , you hear – and Emrys’s charade falters. For just a second, but you see it. Emrys shakes his hand and sends him off and then gets to his feet, making a beeline for the back room, moans of disappointment following him. The older man standing in the background – who you recognise as Gary, the label representative who you saw the time he agreed to consider Gwen’s artwork – is at his heels, stopping for a quick word to one of the  security guards. Chatter increases around you, but nobody moves. He’ll come back soon, he will, he’ll return, oh he’s supposed to be here for another two hours but there are so many people we’ll never get to him in time now!

You suppose you can understand, not the murmurs beside you but Emrys. If you were so emotionally invested in all these followers, these people you could almost call _yours_ , you imagine some days it would be difficult to even get out of bed, let alone walk among them and talk to them and take it upon yourself to ensure their happiness if only for a while.

“Hurry up!” Thunderous – that’s how the voice is in your ear. “Come on already!” The man shoulders through the line, hustled by a small chorus of, “yeah, what’s going on?” and an indignant commotion of “hey, stop pushing!” You lose your footing for a moment as he passes you; you almost miss grabbing him by the arm. He turns to you.

“Back of the line’s that way,” you say as you point, not a hint of leeway in your voice.

“What’s that, mate?” he sneers. “Something you wanna say to my face?”

There is silence. The crowd senses conflict that could turn nasty. You straighten your shoulders. “We’re all waiting for the same thing. It’s only fair you should get in line like the rest of us.” The man’s nostrils flare and his face billows red. “So, stop being a prat and wait at the end of the line.”

“Oh yeah?” A challenge.

“..where an idiot like you belongs.” Accepted.

The first punch you see coming; the second you miss. A sharp pain erupts behind your eye and with your head spinning, you fall to the floor.

Security descends on the man, one being spared to pull you to your feet and escort you to a back room where you can clean up and wait for the police.

Despite your protests, you take the seat and ice pack offered to you before letting the disappointment truly settle in. Unlike before, you’re certain you won’t be meeting Emrys today. You’ve lost your place in line, your vision is wobbling and you haven’t even tried standing up yet, and you doubt Emrys would be going back out there after all the kerfuffle. Your fingers are starting to go numb from the cold, but in a strange way you don’t mind; you take a couple of slow breaths, and then a few more. That was your second chance missed, and now you need to let it go.

In the cover of _Set in Stone_ , a man in a red gambeson and chainmail stands before an ornate sword buried in stone; out of focus, a man in a blue shirt and red kerchief watches ~~you~~ him with unwavering faith.

“Maybe…” The voice isn’t yours. You frown. “I need to let him go.”

“You knew this was going to be slow,” comes the reply. This voice is deeper than the first, commanding. Authoritative. “It was a long shot that it’d happen right away. You just need to be–”

“Don’t you dare say ‘patient’.” The note of resignation resounds clearly in the first voice, and this time it’s punctuated with a sigh. You creep over to the partition, peering around it. Gary’s there, the perfect embodiment of authority, standing opposite a dark-haired man whose back is to you.

Wait.

Could he be...?

“Well, what do you want me to say then, young Emrys?”

Your heart jumps. It _is_.

“I just want...” Emrys heaves another sigh. “I fooled myself, didn’t I, that this would work. We don’t even know for sure he’s heard the songs. And even if he did, we don’t know if he’d remember, so…”

“You’re conveniently forgetting the note from the concert.” They’ve clearly had this argument before.

“And you’re conveniently forgetting I’m not young anymore, Kilgharrah.”

“I am forgetting nothing.”

Emrys growls in frustration. “That’s beside the point! That note could’ve been from anyone! If he remembered, why wouldn’t he say something? Why wouldn’t he find me? I know he’s out there somewhere, I can _feel_ it.” Emrys breathes, and there’s a creak of a chair as he sits down. “But I’m tired of waiting.”

“Well, there’s a hundred people out there right now, waiting for _you_.”

“And none of them are Arthur!” You feel the colour drain for your face.

Gary is silent for a moment. “And if you give up now, then what? What will you do then?”

“..I don’t know.”

“Well, _I_ know that it’s going to be a riot out there if you’re not back soon. Someone’s already been hurt.” You feel guilty that you’re the one they’re talking about. Gary rubs his brow. “I’ll let security know you need a few more minutes, but that’s all I’ll do.” He leaves.

The ‘thank you’ Emrys gives is almost inaudible, then he bows his head to hide an expression that looks something like shame. You know it well. You should say something, but the words you had prepared, the false name, the thank yous, the steadfast resolve to remain stoic, all those things don’t quite _fit_ anymore. But finding the right words at the right time has never been your speciality, and right now you really need the right words.

“Uh…” The noise you make is far from ‘right’. Emrys looks up, frowning. His eyes are blue, somehow familiar as they drink you in. Your jaw falls open and sounds tumble out:

“I believe you’ll find what you’re searching for.”

You’re too scared to move, and for a moment Emrys looks that way too, but he starts towards you, wobbling on his knees like he’s expecting the same hallucinogenic drug that’s making you visible to pull him under entirely at any second. His eyes shine with a clarity that confuses you and with an earnestness of wanting so hard to believe what they see. But his brows are drawn together like he’s seen a ghost – like _you’re_ a ghost.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” you amend quickly.

You’re ignored as he stops a little less than a metre from you. “You remember me?” Emrys demands. “You know who I am?”

“Of course.” You answer too quickly; you meant to simply say, ‘yes’ and besides, when you add, “You’re Emrys,” it doesn’t quite ring as true.

Every millimetre of hope drains from Emrys’s face. “No…”

But this _is_ him…isn’t it? You don’t know any different…do you?

“Oh god. Arthur…” Emrys fidgets, uncertain. “Arthur, please.”

He knows who you are?

Emrys reaches out to touch your face, as though to make sure you’re real, but suddenly he realises what he’s doing and pulls back, muscles stiff and trembling. He searches your eyes; you try to turn your head away, but it’s impossible not to hold his gaze. “You,” Emrys says slowly, the hope in his face deflating, “you really don’t remember, do you.”

You…

“I…”

_A friend in your loneliness._

Tears begin to trace soft, wet patterns over Emrys’s cheeks.

_A pang of guilt._

You’re sorry, you’re so, so sorry you made him feel like this.

_A stab of betrayal._

But whatever it is you remember, _The bitterness of failure._

you don’t think it’s what he wants – _A sparking fire._

and you want more than anything to remember what he wants.  _A dragon in flight._

You want to remember what you think you already _know.A figure beyond a doorway, waiting for you._

You study the blotchy mess his face is becoming. _The weight of the world on your shoulders._

“I’m…I shouldn’t have…I should go–“

_A friend to share it with._

“Stay!” Emrys grabs your wrist. “Please. Stay…”

Then, Emrys’s hand on your wrist changes into something else. Not images, but a grip that clutches the back of your shirt and pulls you from harm’s way; a playful shove; cold fingers that drag you from the warmth of your bed as sunlight pours across your face and chest. Those hands bandage your wounds. They are a kindness, a gentle comfort to your heart as they rest on your shoulders. They mop your brow in the throes of your fever. They hold you upright across thin and surprisingly strong shoulders that support your useless weight as another thrum of pain sends the world spinning before your eyes.

And then, suddenly – a name. “..Merlin?”

Emrys’s breath catches.

You frown. “You’ve been looking…for me.”

He nods minutely. “Yes.” And something inside Emrys lets go. He looks at the floor, a sound of feeble hope escaping and from there it topples, quickly deteriorating into sobs.

Hesitantly, you wind your arms around him, draw him to your chest and hold him tightly, and stutteringly, after a moment, he wraps his arms around your middle in return, clinging to you like his life (or yours) depends on it. There’s a niggling hint in your mind that tries to convince you you’re an imposter, offering comfort when you don’t recall all that he does, but the soothing noises you make and the patterns you trace on his back with your palm come easily, and you don’t move when pent despair pours from his throat like notes from a tinny, portable radio. You don’t move when he begins to quiet, or when Gary returns and laughs a deep, rich laugh and promptly leaves again, or when you have to repeat the words you whisper in his ear because you’ve run out of new ones, because you haven’t room left to care about any of that.

Emrys draws away, eventually, and you find you mourn the warmth. He tries to smile at you, but it’s soggy and tired out, so instead he dashes the wetness from his face with his sleeve and finds particular interest in a place just below your ribs on the left side of your torso, running his fingers over it gently, and you let him. He moves his hand up to cup your jaw, then to rest on your forehead, then to your jaw again.

You’re not uncomfortable, not quite. But you’re at a loss. You cover his hand with your own.

“Merlin?”

After a while, Emrys whispers, the words just for you, “I wrote you so many songs, hoping maybe you’d hear me.”

You listen to the sounds of his breathing and spot the uncertainty still lurking in his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” you breathe as you try and reconcile the image of this man as a symbol, someone you knew only at a distance whose music spoke to you when little else did, with the man calling you by name and staring at you with such familiarity and hope. It doesn’t quite work yet, doesn’t quite add up, but it will if you let it.

You’ll let it.

You pat his hand and allow your lips to tip upwards. “I heard.”


End file.
